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Tag Archives: meditation

After a chilly winter …..spring is back in action. Paramanand Ashram is back with numerous flowers. This post is for everyone to take a break and checkout how ashram looks in Spring. I don’t know about you but for me even watching these flowers is a kind of meditation too. Perhaps now is best place and time to do Meditation.

Spring season

Sunflowers the hard work of Jeferson, Nigora, Kalyan, Mahesh and Many other students

As per our Guruji Meditation is the best medication, now that’s the theory. How to prove that? Well not us but researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital did a study on 16 people on the effect of eight week long mindfulness meditation course. They studied the brain scans of the people before and after the course. The study, published in the January issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, concluded that after completing the course, parts of the participants’ brains associated with compassion and self-awareness grew, and parts associated with stress shrank.

Frontal lobe
This is the most highly evolved part of the brain, responsible for reasoning, planning, emotions and self-conscious awareness. During meditation, the frontal cortex tends to go offline.

Parietal lobe
This part of the brain processes sensory information about the surrounding world, orienting you in time and space. During meditation, activity in the parietal lobe slows down.

Thalamus
The gatekeeper for the senses, this organ focuses your attention by funneling some sensory data deeper into the brain and stopping other signals in their tracks. Meditation reduces the flow of incoming information to a trickle.

Reticular formation
As the brain’s sentry, this structure receives incoming stimuli and puts the brain on alert, ready to respond. Meditating dials back the arousal signal.

Meditation session in progress.

Technically meditation calms you down and also the activity level in your body. Which sometimes matches the activity level during sleep. According to Shawn Achor, meditation can actually make you happier long-term: Meditation helps in rewiring the brain and helps you to relax. And it’s the most effective way to live happier.

Before you read this post I must tell you that I am not an expert in the field of meditation and this post is just from an observer’s perspective and in this case I can assure you I have seen hundreds of yogis crying, laughing and playing like kids in front of me.

I have been working in the ashram for more than two years now and I have seen many yogis coming and going and it has a delightful experience to meet people from different backgrounds, countries, religions in one place and this gives me an edge over others when it comes to this particular subject matter. And by the way I have attended a few meditation classes guided by one of my favourite persons in this whole freaking planet. And god, even Google can’t find words to describe that experience.

So back on subject. What I have observed until now is the fact that meditation is definitely not a simple mental exercise and frankly speaking you do hell of a job while in meditation. Imagine a bullet coming out of James Bond’s pistol…. freaking fast right?? of course billions were invested in that movie. And now imagine slowing down that bullet with YOUR MIND. Now that’s the kind of job you do while in meditation. Perhaps slowing down your brain is the toughest job in the planet and you thought working for NASA is difficult. LOL

I have seen people crying: People tend to re-live their past experiences. In this case it is most liberating. You find the most suitable shoulder to cry on, your OWN.

I have seen people laughing like kids: People tend to cherish the brighter side of their lives. Sometimes people want to celebrate their feats but they don’t find appropriate persons to share that news( Happened to me, recently. I was on top of the world but didn’t had anyone to share it ) . In this case you find the best buddy to share that, your own inner-SELF.

I have seen people dancing: Well dance is one of the most fulfilling thing anyone can do when happy or ANGRY. Don’t forget lord Shiva’s dance. When he dances, he is not the person you would like to see.

I have seen people forgetting their own language: Last year I had this experience of meeting a girl who forgot her own mother tongue after meditation, of course she was back to normal in 30 minutes… I mean we call a language our mother tongue for a reason right, you can never forget it. BUT SHE DID and I saw that with my own eyes. Even I wouldn’t have believed it if I would have heard that from someone else. I am still searching reasons for this……..

There are several ways of doing meditation, method really doesn’t matter. You would cry anyway…..kidding!
You can do meditation while looking at the stars ( which is my favourite past time). Something you love to do and never think twice before doing that without any expectation is a form of meditation. I am having fun writing this post… this is a kind of meditation too.

The things which does matter is the fact whether you are ready to have a roller coater ride and be without seat belts. You can be thrown either way but results are worth LIVING FOR. technically speaking the only thing you need is a will power to give it a try and a strength to carry on when you know the guy beside is snoring like hell. Oops I know who was snoring last time.

Guruji will be available on Google Hangout session and also will be live on youtube on 24 th of JUNE. Plz subscribe us on youtube to join the session. Guruji will be guiding on the subject “Meditation is the best medication”. It’s a very rare opportunity to interact one on one with Guruji.